Pronunciation

[dougo]

To my linguist friends: Doug Hoylman asks, "Why does everyone pronounce this game [Chrononauts] as though it started with 'crow'? Every other English word starting with 'chron'—chronology, chronicle, chronometer, chronic—has a short o." I can't think of a good reason, yet I also pronounce it with a long o. Might it be due to the secondary emphasis on the last syllable? The word chronon is pronounced with a long o as well, but I'm not sure that has common enough usage to matter (and it leads to its own pronunciation question).

Comments

[memegarden.livejournal.com]

I pronounce "Chrononauts" with a long first o, and it hadn't occurred to me that was odd, although you're right, it is. I would also put a long o in "Sononauts", which may be even more puzzling. Merriam-Webster says "sonogram" has a short o, and "chronogram" is pronounced with either a long or a short o.

English is actually fairly inconsistent about syllabification and thus about how syllabification affects vowel sounds. One of the things I teach my students when they're learning to read polysyllabic words is to try "flipping" the syllable divisions in a word if their first try doesn't make sense. For instance:

pol-ish (first syllable closed by the l, so short o)
Po-lish (first syllable left open, so long o)

Hey, Doug, we're back to isonyms!